PROFESSOR BICKERTON’S MISSION

Evening Star, Issue 14512, 2 November 1910, Page 9

PROFESSOR BICKERTON’S MISSION

HOPES OF A CONFERENCE ON COSMO-PHYSICS; “NEW WORLDS FOR OLD.” [Feoii Oya Special Coesespondent.] LONDON, September 16. Professor Bickerton, of Christchurch, whose arrival I chronicled last week, has attracted some measure of attention on the part of the Press hero, and interviews with the distinguished New Zealand scientist appeared in the ‘Daily Graphic’ and the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette ’ this week. The latter journal devotes nearly a column to Professor Bickerton’s cosmic theory of the third body. Professor Bickerton has come to London to place his cosmic theory before the scientific world. As it has been usual at most great exhibitions to have a scientific conference, he hopes to induce the scientific authorities to organise at the Japan-Bntish Exhibition before it closes such a conference on cosmo-physics. He also hopes to lecture before the learned societies of Europe. —Our Sunless Weather.— Professor Bickerton’s opinion on the recent weather—we have had four sunless summers in succession—is interesting. Ho is inclined to attribute the abnormal weather to ice-floes. Wireless telegraphy as a suggested solution ho swept aside, as having too slight an influence for effects so world-wide. For not in Europe only, but also in Australasia, has the weather been abominable and abnormal. “No,” said the Professor, “so far as I have studied the weather I am absolutely unable to account for these abnormal summers except by the possibility that vast ice-floes may have been broken from the Arctic and Antarctic caps, and floated north and south, so moderating the surface currents of the earth. I can see no other reason whv the weather should hare been so singular/’ An earthquake wave, it was explained, as ar counting for this possibility, would cause a tremendous lift on the edges of ice con tinente, and hundreds of square miles might be broken away to float towards the temperate regions of the earth. “This would have the effect that we have seen in this abnormal weather,” the Professor added, “ and if this theory is correct it gives an additional reason why Arctic and Antarctic exploration should bo - pursued with -energy.” • .